Wednesday, December 03, 2008

A: They can both help us reach new evolutionary levels, and have done so in the past.

This study of 14,000 children has shown increased breastfeeding in the first few months of life appears to raise a child's verbal IQ. By the time these children were 6 years old, the breastfed children had a verbal IQ 7.5 higher than the non breastfed children.

Note: mothers likely to have higher IQ children -- that would be higher IQ mothers -- may choose breastfeeding, and thus these results may be vapor. You cannot breastfeed a kid into being smart than its genetics predict it can be; however, you can minimize environmental damage to that potential.

The researchers injected rats with HU210, a synthetic drug that is about one-hundred times as powerful as THC, the high-inducing compound naturally found in marijuana. They then used a chemical tracer to watch new cells growing in the hippocampus.

They found that HU210 seemed to induce new brain cell growth, just as some antidepressant drugs do, they report in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. This suggests that they could potentially be used to reduce anxiety and depression, Zhang says. He adds that the research might help to create new cannabinoid-based treatments.